Who is the best QB in NFL history?

It is time once again to reopen one of the largest can of worms for all fans of the NFL; who is the greatest quarterback ever?

There are many ways to measure this so I attempted to come up with another method of determining who the best quarterback is. With all due respect to the many other guys who have played the quarterback position, I limited myself to 10 different players spanning the last 53 years of professional football.

Johnny Unitas
Roger Staubach
Terry Bradshaw
Joe Montana
John Elway
Dan Marino
Steve Young
Brett Favre
Tom Brady
Peyton Manning

One can easily argue that some people don’t belong on this list but this was a first pass. Essentially, I wanted to put together some preconceptions and see which of them held up to statistical scrutiny and which did not.

One of the tools I employed for this analysis I stole from baseball analysis. While OPS+ and ERA+ take into account park factors, my own normalized stats simply compare the rates of these QB’s against the league average over the course of their careers. The reason for this is simple; the game is changing and at the heart of this change are more efficient quarterbacks. In the 1960’s, the overall quarterback rating for the league was 66.4. In the 70’s, it regressed to 62.4, probably due to expansion and the AFL/NFL merger. However, since then, that number in the 80’s, 90, and 00’s has been 71.9, 75.2, and 79.2, respectively, reaching an all-time high of 82.0 last year.

There are many factors that go into that but the important thing is simply to keep in mind that the nature of playing quarterback has changed very much in the past 40 years. This was my first task in my analysis of these ten quarterbacks; normalizing their quarterback rating numbers (from now on, I will abbreviate quarterback rating as RTG). The answer I came up with was to simply compare them with the league averages and like OPS+ and ERA+, multiply them by 100. Therefore, a RTN+ of 100 means a league average quarterback, 125 is 25% better than the average, and 75 is 25% worse.

The results…

133 – Staubach
130 – Young
127 – Montana
122 – Unitas
121 – Manning
118 – Brady
117 – Marino
111 – Favre
109 – Bradshaw
108 – Elway

To me, by far the most surprising place on that list is #10, John Elway. According to this, throughout his career, his passer rating was only 8% better than the league average. Now, before citizens of Denver, CO, hunt me down (because I only live half an hour from downtown) let me say that my analysis tools don’t take into account intangibles or the ability (or lack thereof) to gain yards on the ground. There is no denying that John Elway was a great QB and definitely deserves to be in this discussion… however, when it comes to RTN+, he is #10, not #1.

I decided to use three other pieces to put together this puzzle and feel free to throw things at your computer when you read my choices because I’ll still be writing and you’ll be paying for another computer…

The other three were winning percentage, TD/INT ratio, and yards per game. A quick note in defense of this metrics. Football is a team game but quarterbacks have more influence than any other single player since they touch the ball on every offensive snap (excluding fakes or the recent limited adoption of the Wildcat formation). TD/INT ratio is the most easily defended since it measured a quarterback’s ability to make good decisions against questionable decisions. And, of course, there are exceptions. A pass was tipped at the line of scrimmage and was then intercepted. However, for those, there are also perfectly thrown balls that the defender just makes an extraordinary play in order to make an interception, so given a large enough sample size, these instances usually have a habit of evening themselves out. The last metric, yards per game, is also very much dependent upon the team these QB’s played for. However, many coaches are able to utilize the talent that they have and therefore, better quarterbacks will put up more yards on the stat sheets. I realize that this logic is far from 100% solid, but considering that it is only ¼ of the formula, I feel comfortable including it.

The results were quite interesting. Again, a league average QB would have received a “value”, if you will, of 100 once these metrics are averaged.

142.04 – Tom Brady
141.78 – Roger Staubach
141.03 – Joe Montana
137.37 – Steve Young
134.44 – Peyton Manning
128.00 – Dan Marino
124.15 – Johnny Unitas
118.79 – Brett Favre
115.84 – John Elway
115.51 – Terry Bradshaw

Now, of course, anyone looking to poke holes in my lovely little formula will point out how little wins and losses have to do with quarterback play. Obviously, it is the most important position on the field and has more to do with winning and losing than any other single position but it’s not as if a QB playing well guarantees a win or a QB playing poorly guarantees a loss. All but three of these 10 quarterbacks were helped by the teams that they played on. Only Steve Young, Dan Marino, and Peyton Manning had W%+ marks less than their overall marks shown above. So who benefited the most from playing on good teams? Terry Bradshaw was the runaway #1, followed by Tom Brady and then John Elway.

All of this manipulation of numbers is great but how does this answer the question; who is the best quarterback in NFL history? Before I render a final verdict, I absolutely don’t want to hear anything about “system quarterbacks”. Any good coach knows how to get good results out of his players. Joe Montana and Steve Young were perfect quarterbacks for the West Coast Offense and between the two of them; they won 5 Super Bowls as starters and have two of the highest quarterback ratings in league history. Bill Belichick is one of the best defensive minds in the history of football and I believe that any of these quarterbacks could succeed with him as a head coach.

If you keep the effects the team has on the quarterback (in other words, leave in the win percentage and the yards per game metrics) Tom Brady ranks number 1. However, if you only take into account quarterback rating and TD/INT ratio, Steve Young ranks number 1 and Tom Brady ranks number 4. The answer to this question depends entirely on what statistics you value the most. For me, quarterback rating is the best representation of how well a quarterback plays and the TD/INT ratio measures the ability of a quarterback to make good decisions and good throws versus bad ones. Therefore, the answer can only be Steve Young or Joe Montana. Granted, Young leads Montana by a few points but nobody is close to those two and between them, I have to go with the one that I’ve said for years and is one of the more cliché choices: Joe Montana.